BEILOCK: In my research and in others’, we’ve shown perhaps counterintuitively that individuals who have the most ability to focus, the most working memory, the most fluid intelligence, are actually more prone to perform poorly under stress. And the idea is that if you normally devote lots of cognitive resources to what you’re doing and being in a pressure-filled situation robs you of those resources, you can’t perform as well.

BEILOCK: We know that sometimes people don’t perform up to their potential, precisely when they want to the most. And sometimes that happens because people pay too much attention to the details of what they’re doing, details that should be left on autopilot.

BEILOCK: There’s research showing that when you have friendly faces in front of you, people who are supportive — although that could feel nice, it actually creates pressure-filled situations. You often start thinking of yourself as they might. And so when my mother is in the room, I sometimes think of myself as a young girl. And you also are quite self-conscious.

ERICSSON: …and I think that’s what we’re finding here, is that the really elite people, those who are really able to keep improving, are the ones who actually have a very refined description of the situation and are increasing their control over what they’re doing, as opposed to allowing it just to happen.

ERICSSON: My experience is that choking is quite rare by those individuals that we study, who are consistently excelling. And it seems to be almost part of being an expert is that you deal with the kind of situations that would be experienced as very high-pressure for other people.

GNEEZY: That would have made me very nervous. That would have made me put more effort into this. When we look at incentives in economics, we think about two ways in which it’s going to affect us. The first is that if I’ll pay you more, you’ll put more effort in the task. And the second assumption is that more effort will lead to better performance. That’s not necessarily true. And that’s the part of choking. It might be that I can push you so much to try so hard that it will actually backfire, and you’ll perform worse.

Gneezy 在印度做了一些實驗，發現在更高的金錢激勵下，人們的表現往往會變得更差 (也就是發生 Choking)：

For the three-digit memory game, roughly 40 percent of the participants succeeded under low incentives; under high incentives, the success rate was just 20 percent. For the dart-ball game, the success rate under low incentives was 10 percent; and around 7 percent under high incentives. For the metal packing game? Under low incentives, 25 percent of the participants succeeded; under high incentives, nobody succeeded. Or, put another way, at least 25 percent of them choked.